The CGIAR Research Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics (Humidtropics) was an agricultural research for development program that aimed for sustainable intensification of agricultural systems to improve the livelihoods of farm households. The Central Mekong Action Area was primarily focused on the complex of rice and non-rice farming systems (plus areas with other land uses) in the non-flood-prone lowlands, uplands and highlands. The Action Area covered six countries (Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam). Continue reading
Category Archives: Impact Assessment
Kenyan herding families that vaccinate their cattle against disease send more daughters to school—New study
Vaccinating cattle in Kenya against East Coast fever sends more girls to school Continue reading
Impacts of innovation platforms on smallholder dairy production
The ‘innovation platforms approach’ is an effective way of establishing systematic interactions among stakeholders in the agricultural sector by stimulating technical, institutional and organizational innovations in agricultural value chains. Researchers from the University of Bonn, Germany, ILRI and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), tested the effectiveness of a dairy innovation platform that is trying to improve farmers’ access to cattle feeds in Tanzania. Continue reading
Driving livestock development through multidisciplinary systems research: An impact narrative
Scaling up transdisciplinary research so that a systems approach can be applied by more and more scientists could make a huge contribution to development in smallholder farming. Continue reading
Safe and fair food for informal markets: A food safety impact narrative
Over the past decade, ILRI research has provided insight into the impacts of food-borne diseases, challenged conventional thinking on food safety and developed a successful approach to participatory risk analysis for understanding and managing food safety in a more dynamic future. Continue reading
Leveraging the informal dairy sector for health and wealth: An impact narrative from Kenya and Assam
ILRI’s support to smallholder dairy development has benefited the Kenyan economy. The benefits of policy change include improved safety of milk, increased profit margins for small-scale vendors, greater access to milk for poor consumers, and employment for many others in the sector, with knock-on benefits for the wider economy. Building on the Kenyan approach, an initiative to improve milk handling among traders in Assam in India resulted in a new governance institution, increased risk mitigation, improvements in milk quality, higher sales and increased customer satisfaction. Continue reading
Using forage germplasm to improve livestock feeds and rural livelihoods: An impact narrative
The forage collection maintained by ILRI, for example, contains germplasm from around 19,000 plant populations representing over 1,400 forage species, including grasses, legumes and fodder trees, many of which are under threat in the wild from land use changes and over-grazing. ILRI’s forage collection is providing scientists with the genetic material to develop climate-smart, high yielding and disease tolerant varieties that will have a key role in Africa’s farming future. Continue reading
On the making of a report card (SDGs) on a report card (MDGs) on the world’s (unfinished) development agenda
Opinion piece by Pamela Anderson and Josh Lozman published in the Impatient Optimists Blog of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: ‘Food Security and Nutrition and the Post-2015 Development Goals’, 24 Mar 2014. Continue reading
Questioning the impact of innovation platforms in agricultural research
Innovation platforms are widely used in agricultural research to connect different stakeholders to achieve common goals. This twelfth brief reflects on some of the challenges of measuring outcomes and impacts around innovation platforms. Continue reading
40-year CGIAR history published: Lots of lessons for the ‘New CGIAR’
From CGIAR comes a new ‘look back’ at its evolution over 40 years. The book is titled The CGIAR at 40: Institutional Evolution of the World’s Premier Agricultural Research Network. It was written by Selçuk Özgediz, a Turkish national who was affiliated with CGIAR for 27 years, the last several years as management adviser to the CGIAR Secretariat … Continue reading